Sunday, March 18, 2012

Please support Cristina's International Marrow Donor Flyer Drive!

It's so easy!

Download - Print - Post flyers to help Cristina find her marrow match. See it? That's a Helping Cristina flyer hanging on the bulletin board at the Coffee Society in Cupertino, California. Please send us pictures if you post a flyer too!

There are three versions you can download:

1. A short, single page flyer with tear away tabs
2. A longer 2 page version with a single page flyer and tear away tabs on a second sheet
3. A flyer translated to Italian for people in Italy who would like to help

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Thank you for Visiting Helping Cristina

Cristina Di Corte is 22 years old and suffers from a disease so rare you've probably never heard of it before. Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalopathy (MNGIE) is an inherited condition that has caused her digestive tract to no longer be able to move food through her body or absorb nutrients from it.

• Because of this she can no longer eat or drink but instead receives all of her nutrition, fluids and medications via a central line catheter.

• She suffers from excessive weight loss.
The disease causes her to experience severe gastro-intestinal pain and she is beginning to lose sensation in her lower limbs.

• The disease also causes a toxic build-up of two chemicals in her blood so she occasionally requires blood transfusions to normalize her blood chemistry.

• MNGIE is a progressive disease that moves at different speeds in different patients. Cristina's doctors have declared her need as urgent due to the speed at which her disease is progressing.

A bone marrow transplant won't cure her, but can stop MNGIE's progress and has the potential to prolong Cristina's life by decades. Because no one in her immediate family was a marrow match, for Cristina to have a future that includes the kind of quality of life we would all want, she must now rely on the kindness of a stranger to donate their bone marrow (aka stem cells) to her.